


The Heart in the Machine

by AnonEMouse



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Avengers bro-down, But mainly just because he's clueless, Clint is a dudebro, Coulson is a little bit of a dick, F/M, M/M, Pepper runs the world, Tony Stark's heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-10
Updated: 2012-11-10
Packaged: 2017-11-18 08:15:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/558804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonEMouse/pseuds/AnonEMouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint's code is faulty and Tony is determined to fix it, or, how Tony Stark became a matchmaker.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Heart in the Machine

Never let it be said that Tony Stark doesn’t pay attention.  


Well, let it be said. Life is a lot easier ( _less complicated, less pressure, less expectation, less disappointment_ ) if people don’t realize how very in control of every moment Tony is, even the most seemingly out-of-control ones. He’s never been too drunk, too stoned or too tired to know what he was doing with each and every second of each and every day ( _control, control, always be in control_ ). It’s just better if everyone thinks he’s an idiot savant ( _take that, Daddy-o, and shove your legacy up your ass_ ).  


But Tony does, point of fact, notice everything around him. Watches, observes, deduces, collates, relentlessly. He’s basically a walking computer and he likes it that way ( _to be Iron Man all the time, oh God, to never have to leave the suit and live inside the metal and the machine_ ). He lives in his high-tech palace and he watches everything and records it all and anything he touches can be an extension of his very brain so there is only a minimal break between what he sees in his head and what he can show people, whenever he wants ( _JARVIS is me and I am JARVIS and one day I’ll find a way to live with him in my head and we’ll be the same—man and machine and Iron Man—and it will be perfect, perfect_ ).  


So it’s Tony who sees the truth. Pepper almost sees it, picks up on the discrepancies and the occasional failure in protocol ( _God why can’t everyone just be a machine and behave according to programming and there would be no messes, ever_ ), but Pepper with her warm heart doesn’t like to see the breakdowns so she looks past it, focuses on something else, something better, and bends the world till it fits her shape. Beautiful Pepper ( _mine, mine, all mine, something Dad never had first and no one can touch but me, me_ ), she would make everyone happy through sheer force of will and never mind if they wanted to be happy like that or in a different way.  


It’s because of Pepper, actually, that Tony sees what he sees, because she’s doing her world-bending thing and her programming is overriding old, old codes and if Tony Stark is good at anything it’s fixing old coding ( _fuck you, Dad, DUM-E is fine, he works, he’ll last because I made him to last and the things I make don’t get left behind_ ). What he sees is this.  


Pepper brings the cellist, a pretty woman maybe a little young for Coulson but certainly old enough to know what she’s doing, to see Agent ( _Phil, a friend, maybe, maybe a friend named Phil_ ) once he’s released from medical and Barton is doing his watchdog thing, passing through a room before Coulson enters, eyes sweeping for threats. Tony has seen him do this ever since they were informed of Coulson’s miraculous survival ( _Fury lies, he’s a lying liar who lies out his lying-hole_ ). It’s not an all-out perimeter check, and most of the time, Barton doesn’t linger. He just has a way of being somewhere right before Coulson, as if he meant to take whatever was coming for Agent first ( _he took Loki’s spear first and which is worse, which is worse, a mechanical heart or no heart at all?_ ). Tony doesn’t think Coulson is even aware of what Barton is doing.  


But this time, Barton sees the cellist. He doesn’t slow and his expression never changes, but he nods at the woman and says, “Rachel.” Then he disappears for three days, not coming back until Cellist Rachel has reverted to her regularly scheduled programming. But Tony knows that move, he’s the king of that move, that is the Tony Stark Patented Fuck Off Move. When Pepper dated that nerd from legal he fucked off to Macau for a month ( _please leave a message, Tony Stark is too busy not experiencing emotion to deal with backstabbing PAs and assholes from legal_ ). So Tony knows, he knows a torch when he sees one ( _Mama don’t cry, Mama don’t be sad, Daddy loves us, he does, he does_ ).  


He just doesn’t know what to do. Clint Barton isn’t his friend, Clint Barton doesn’t require his pity, Clint Barton hasn’t asked for anything ( _can’t just retool people’s lives, they’re people, not programs, they have to self-code and correct on their own—inefficient_ ). So what to do? ( _Build till it’s better, build till it’s right, build till you can survive anything, anything._ ) So he tinkers, descends into the depths of his labs and fixes the suit, fixes Rogers’s suit, builds a new car, writes a piece of code for auto-sorting messages that ought to revolutionize email, invents a new smart phone and then writes out a balanced budget for the company that he wraps up with a bow and presents to Pepper that night before they go to bed and she fucks him like he’s been a good boy ( _home, home, this is my home_ ).  


Still no answer for Barton’s broken code, though. It’s bad programming, it has to be, Tony knows that much. One of them is wired wrong, he just has to figure out if Barton or Coulson is the more broken and then he can reprogram them till they work right. So he watches, and he records, and he sorts data until he can find where the code diverged from its purpose and became faulty.  


Barton, as far as he can tell, is optimal except for his deficient romantic wants. Barton is a well-oiled machine, moving and operating with a very precise system, which is perfection to Tony. There’s no wasted programming in Barton, but for that nagging bit of dropped code, that error message flashing over his head ( _404: not found, Barton has no one and no one has Barton and no, no, he can’t be left like that, that’s a bad place to be_ ). Tony spends more time with him, trying to root out the bug in his system. They redesign the bow, then the arrows, then the quiver. Long nights ( _days? What’s the difference really?_ ) in the lab turns into watching movies together turns into forming a HALO team that is the bane of everyone, everywhere ( _best place to be, son, is on top_ ). Tony finds he genuinely likes Barton. He wants desperately to fix his programming and make him right.  


Agent, on the other hand, is still rebooting, still working back to maximum performance after Loki trashed his hard drive. The routines and sub-routines are there, they’re just not all operational yet. Tony leaves Coulson to Pepper, mostly, preferring to show his affection through jokes and offers to build him a mech suit ( _stop it, Tony, I’m busy, if you want to be useful go fix this for me_ ), but he collates all the same and deduces that Coulson has no idea about Barton. They’re close, they’re friends, real friends, like him and Rhodey are friends ( _Rhodey likes me and treats me like a pal and Rhodey gets it when I say people should be more like machines, he knows it’s because machines don’t hurt one another_ ), but Coulson doesn’t know about Barton’s broken code. He doesn’t know about the sub-routines Barton has just for him, doesn’t understand that Barton is hard-wired to him but the wiring is frayed and the coding is bad and if no one fixes it Barton will melt down, for real this time.  


But Tony doesn’t know what to do. He isn’t part of the little club the SHIELD agents have, and he could blunder through like he doesn’t know any better but now he really likes Barton, Barton is his like Rhodey is his, like Happy is his, and Tony doesn’t like it when other people touch his stuff ( _what did you do, Dad, what have you done, he’s mine, mine, and you’ve broken him like he’s a toy_ ). Tony doesn’t always get people but he gets machines and Barton is a machine, tuned to specific regs, and he knows if he hands him over to Coulson, Coulson will break him and he’ll have to break Coulson back ( _don’t touch my stuff_ ).  


So he fiddles with the code, handles it with care, treats it like he treats DUM-E’s ancient programming and JARVIS’s most delicate routines. He calls for a Merry Men’s night out and declares Barton their Robin Hood ( _call him Clint, he said it’s okay, but if I call him a funny name he’ll know I like him and maybe he’ll like me back and we can be friends for real_ ) and they go to a dive Tony knows in the Bronx. They play darts and drink flat beer and throw peanuts on the floor and he watches as Barton leaves with a likely looking lass, checking over his shoulder that Agent is accounted for and working within acceptable parameters. He only goes once he’s sure Coulson will be okay, but Coulson doesn’t look back and Tony thinks for a minute he might hate Coulson, just a little ( _look at me and see me, me_ ).  


Still no solution but now he knows that Barton’s programming is operational, he’s just got this one errant piece of code, one dangling line that leaves him open to the virus of loving Coulson and not being loved back ( _that’s the worst thing, the worst thing, to love and not be loved back, but I have Pepper now and I will kill anyone who tries to take her from me_ ). He goes back to the labs, thinks some more, redesigns the suit, rewires the Tower, lets JARVIS out to play with SHIELD’s computers, builds Clint a crossbow, invents a new pressure containment valve for the arc reactor, booby-traps Bruce’s lab for a joke, sketches Pepper in a suit ( _Pepper in a suit, hmmm_ ), and finally, finally, thinks of a solution.  


“Hey Bart,” Tony says ( _Bart—get it? Like Rhodey, like Happy, it means you’re my friend_ ).  


“Yeah?”  


They’re playing HALO again, destroying some school kids in Poland who think they’re just a couple of guys, not Tony Stark and Hawkeye. Coulson is on the couch, files spread over the coffee table, working because he’s always working, because he’s Agent. It’s his most efficient routine.  


“Come work for me.”  


“What?” Clint isn’t really listening but it doesn’t matter. This isn’t really for him anyway.  


“Chief Security Officer,” Tony says, never looking away from his half of the split screen. But he knows Coulson has stopped working behind them. “Better hours, better pay, excellent benefits, comp time for Avenger business. Pepper agreed not to make you wear a suit.”  


“Seriously?”  


“Of course I’m serious.” He pretends offense. “Do you think I go around letting just anyone be a senior executive at my company? Besides my former PA, or that guy from the diner I made Chief Lunch Officer because I like his way with a brisket.”  


Coulson is totally silent, and his gaze is a weighty thing.  


“I know you’ve got your little secret agents’ club,” he goes on, “but we’d be willing to lend you out as a consultant. You can still play soldiers with SHIELD, just come and whip my security into shape, too.”  


Clint pounds his controller, blowing up one of the Polish kids in the game, and says, “I’ll think about it.”  


“Cool.”  


Coulson goes back to work but he doesn’t shuffle his papers with the same level of enthusiasm.  


Sometime in the night, after HALO and the labs and You’s broken processor, Tony is digging in the fridge for leftovers when Clint reaches in and snags two bottles of his nasty sport drink ( _let DUM-E make you a smoothie, it might have a little battery acid in it but he means well_ ).  


“Hey man,” Clint says. “No thanks on the job, but it was a nice offer.”  


Tony says nothing, watching Clint leave wearing only his boxers and reeking of sex and come. When he sees Coulson the next day he’s on the receiving end of a hard look but Tony just grins.  


“Use it or lose it, Agent,” he says with a wink.  


And later, much later, after Clint reviews their security anyway and Agent moves into his suite and Pepper is the only one surprised by the whole thing, after a skirmish in a forest in Canada with what looked like giant crab robots of doom, Clint whacks Iron Man with his bow and says, “You’re a good friend, Tony.”  


( _We’re friends, we’re friends and you won’t leave and I’ll never let your code break and I’ll build you the best weapons you’ve ever imagined and Dad was wrong, wrong, people do like me and I do good things that help, not hurt, and yes I’ll go with you to city hall and look, I put tracking chips in your rings because you should always know, you should always know where your complement is, your code won’t work right without your complement, I wired you together so you would be better because you’re my friend, you’re my friend and I take care of my friends because I didn’t have any—not ones I didn’t build—for the longest, until Rhodey and Pepper and Happy, and now you’re my friend, too, and I’ll always make sure you’re running to optimal specs, because we’re friends._ )  


Never let it be said that Tony Stark doesn’t have a heart.  


Well, let it be said. Just, you know.


End file.
